Written and edited by Norm Scott:
EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!! MOBILIZE!!!
Three pillars of The Resistance – providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers. We link up with bands of resisters. Nothing will change unless WE ALL GET INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE!

Note: online learning will replace teachers. Another example of the UFT being a partner in crime.

Leonie Haimson wrote:

On Inside City Hall last night, Steve Barr was selling the expansion of his "Green dot" charters in NYC, where he said he will focus on online learning, bring his "model" inside DOE, and he bragged about how he's working closely w/ the UFT, including Leo Casey and Michael Mulgrew.

He says "parents are owners" but so far neither the DOE, Barr, nor apparently the UFT have told anyone what schools in the Bronx he intends to "turn around."

"If you can find that mutual co-option {between union and charter school operators], we can get beyond 3% [of students at ] charters, the great works happening at of charters should be scaled up as quickly as possible, we don't have time to play these adult games."'

Answering the Where Is He Now? question, on July 30, 2014, California Democrats for Education Reform announced that with their chair Steve Barr they're going to create a political consensus to reform education. No New ...

Hmm.. Steve Barr of Green Dot charters and then the pretentiously named “Future is Now” charters was always a favorite of Michael Mulgrew and the UFT. Several of his charters were started in NYC w/ their enthusiastic ...

On Inside City Hall last night, Steve Barr was selling the expansion of his "Green dot" charters in NYC, where he said he will focus on online learning, bring his "model" inside DOE, and he bragged about how he's working ...

Well, that is exactly what is happening in Los Angeles where Steve Barr of Green Dot charters, Randi Weingarten's ally in crime in setting up a charte r school in the Bronx, has formed a company union to compete with the LA ...

My, how time flies. It seems like only yesterday—actually it was early 2013– that Oprah began filming “the dramatic transformation of John McDonough High School in New Orleans for a film called “Blackboard Wars.” The star of the show was charter entrepreneur Steve Barr, who had founded the Green Dot charter chain in Los Angeles to national acclaim, then moved on to found a new chain called “Future is Now.” FIN was going to work its miracle on John McDonogh and Oprah was going to be there to capture it on film.
This was printed in The Advocate in January 2013:
“NEW ORLEANS — The students of John McDonogh High School will be at the center of a documentary series scheduled to air in March on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
In a news release sent by the network on Saturday, “Blackboard Wars” is described as telling the story of “the dramatic transformation of New Orleans’ John McDonogh High School, where more than half of its students fail to graduate.”
The series was filmed over the fall at the school, which has a reputation of struggling academics and violence, particularly after the gaining national media attention when a student was fatally shot in the school’s crowded gymnasium in 2003.
Six hour-long episodes have been filmed thus far.
Last summer, Steve Barr, leader of the charter operator Future is Now, took over the school, which was still failing after six years of being run directly by the Recovery School District.
Barr is known for his aggressive takeovers of schools in Los Angeles and for working closely with teachers’ unions, an unusual approach for a charter operator.
With “unprecedented access,” the news release describes following the adult stars of the show, “education maverick Steve Barr and no-nonsense principal Dr. Marvin Thompson as they embark together on an unpredictable mission to reinvent and revive the struggling school.”
Thompson, who was hired by Barr as a co-principal, previously worked as the superintendent of schools in Roanoke, Va., and then as president of an education consulting company. Barr also traveled around the country to recruit talented teachers.
At a panel discussion held Saturday in California, Thompson, Barr and the show’s producer, Eddie Barbini, addressed questions about distrust from the community, privacy, the use of the word “war” in the title and their educational philosophies.
Asked if he felt the school’s outcome was successful, Barr described his first visit to the school last year, when it was set to close, according to a transcript of the panel discussion.
He said of 261 students enrolled, it was rare to see more than 60 in attendance on any given day.
Currently, he said the school has 409 students and an attendance rate of approximately 80 percent.
One audience member at the panel discussion asked Thompson how, as principal, he could change the attitudes of students who didn’t want to learn.
“It’s not failure or inability to learn,” Thompson said. “It’s the desire to learn and someone to push them. Most of us in this room had someone to push us. … These young people don’t have that. So we have to meet them at their most fundamental level, which is their most basic self-esteem need, which is love first.”
The miracle is already captured on film. The secret is out: No one was pushing those kids until FIN arrived.
Except the miracle didn’t happen.
In January, 2014, the news got out that McDonough was closing. Steve Barr said it was closing for renovations, and he didn’t want to disrupt “the culture.” Louisiana blogger Crazy Crawfish pointed out that enrollments were falling, test scores were abysmal, and costs were astronomical for the school. Some “culture.”
At a board meeting of the charter last spring, Steve Barr said there were too many high school seats in the Recovery School District, and McDonough was closing simply because of supply-and-demand.
“As John McDonogh High’s leaders begin the process of closing the New Orleans school, charter chief Steve Barr took the opportunity at a no-quorum board meeting Tuesday to give his explanation of what went wrong. He said the problem boiled down to supply and demand.
State Education Superintendent John White told him that New Orleans public high schools had 125 seats for every 100 students, Barr said. “It’s not management. It’s not we don’t know what we’re doing. You can’t run a high school with 300 kids.”
John McDonogh had 311 students as of Oct. 1, 2013, down from 389 the year before.
The state Recovery School District decided to close the historic New Orleans building for renovations, and Barr’s Future Is Now charter group will not be in charge when “John Mac” reopens. The school has posted dismal test scores in its first two years of a failed turnaround and was called “the most dangerous school in America” in an Oprah television network miniseries.
Tuesday was the charter board’s first meeting since the closure was announced. Two board members attended — John Hope and Charles Fenet — and no members of the public.”
So, no dramatic transformation, no turnaround. Steve Barr returned to California to become leader of the pro-charter Democrats for Education Reform.
Mercedes Schneider explains what happened next:
“McDonogh closed in June 2014. As a part of washing its hands of New Orleans, Barr’s ironically-named Future Is Now (FIN) left behind equipment that the Recovery School District (RSD) (another ironic name) is auctioning off in the aftermath of the FIN-RSD divorce.
“On October 11, 2014, RSD auctioned off laptops that still had student information on them, including student social security numbers.”
More broken promises. More charter churn. Will Oprah return to New Orleans to report on the failure of FIN? To write FINIS to FIN? Don’t count on it.

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What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

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Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

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Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

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The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

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Timothy TysonProfessor of African American Studies and HistoryDuke University

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How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

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Outsource our children

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

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When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

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On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

From Sharon Higgins

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

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Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

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